Even before the opera starts, the beauty of Venice takes hold. The opening credits are accompanied by film of Teatro La Fenice and the city’s historic vistas, leading on perfectly to Pier Luigi Pizzi’s visually stunning production. Here is Death in Venice in high Visconti style, ravishingly designed in greys and silver blues, and inimitably Italian in the classical elegance of its settings. No other production of this opera has so successfully transported the audience through a series of fully conceived sets – starting out from a graveyard built of piles of books, along the Grand Canal, checking in to a black-and-white marble hotel, and then out on to the beach, where the games of Apollo take place under the gaze of the god’s giant statue.

Does the magnificence of the production upstage the singers? Yes, a little, although the cast are well inside their roles. Marlin Miller sings with a refined lyrical sensibility that makes the most of Aschenbach’s long stretches of limpid arioso and is alive to the poetry of the words. He also charts the character’s decline vividly, but his younger-than-usual Aschenbach comes across as softer, and perhaps lesser in stature, than either Peter Pears with his patrician hauteur or the rigorously unsentimental Robert Tear on Glyndebourne’s rival DVD.

In the seven roles of his nemesis, Scott Hendricks sings toughly, bolstered by Pizzi’s portrayal of this central relationship as a physical clench of opposites. As Britten intended, the role of Tadzio is taken by a dancer, the dark and very Italian Alessandro Riga, who bristles with adolescent pride. Like most of the offstage sounds, Razek-François Bitar’s Voice of Apollo is too distant and the small parts are not generally well taken. Though securing decent playing, the conductor, Bruno Bartoletti, could have given the music a stronger emotional pull, as Richard Hickox did (Chandos, 5/05). If this was a CD, the recording would not be first choice, but the beauty and grandeur of the production on DVD make it an exceptional treat. It is unlikely we will see another Death in Venice to rival this one visually for a long time. Highly recommended.